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Originally posted by Niki2:
It is well known to many that Fox News serves up lies on a daily basis. Sometimes the lies appear to be blatant distortions or outright falsehoods. Other times they are the result of sloppy reporting. Some of the lies are harmless, some are maddening, and some can prove deadly for those affected by them. What happened after Fox News reported on a Sioux Falls, SD school board decision on saying the Pledge of Allegiance is an example of the latter.

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School Board Blames KELO Reporting Error for Pledge of Allegiance Controversy

School board members in Sioux Falls, S.D. are blaming a reporting error by CBS affiliate KELO for sparking national controversy on the role of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, according to the Argus Leader:

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Some board members and their families say they’ve received threats after a Nov. 12 vote that requires middle schools to recite the Pledge daily. A group of veterans wanted the district to make it mandatory in high schools as well, and national media coverage of the issue has brought a flurry of complaints.

[...] Board members blamed what they called a misleading news story by KELO-TV as the original source of misinformation; the news station, which did not cover the meeting in person, reported that the board had voted to end the practice of saying the Pledge in high school. KELO corrected the headline and its story, but some board members say they took too long to do so.

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The school board did vote unanimously not to require high school students to take the Pledge of Allegiance, but contrary to KELO’s report, the vote upheld the current policy, which has been in place since the 1970s.

The president of the school board told KELO that board members are “getting bombarded with calls and emails … from people who think we took it out of the high school.” As NewsBlues notes, KELO reported on the subsequent firestorm without noting that its own reporting had played a part in the outrage.

The school board vote has received national attention from Fox News, the Blaze and the Associated Press. https://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/school-board-blames-kelo-reporting-e
rror-for-pledge-of-allegiance-controversy_b109611]

Fox News picked up on the story, which was discussed by Megyn Kelly on her show, The Kelly File.

If the quotes from school board members seem cut off in those clips offered to Fox News viewers, that’s because they were edited down to present the point that the network wanted to make. The full comments from board members are available here, on the Sioux Falls School District website. Would it surprise anyone to learn that the full quotes, in context, present a very different picture than what Fox News offered? For example, on the clip offered to Kelly’s viewers, school board member Kate Parker says: “We do not… There’s not always an opportunity to have the Pledge Of Allegiance spoken every day.”

Now, here’s the complete quote:

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…we wanted to make it clear that at the high school level, we do not… there’s not always an opportunity to have the Pledge Of Allegiance spoken every day. We don’t have home rooms. But we do have assemblies, and the principals that were in the discussion with us really said that, or they talked about the assemblies and how it’s a much more somber moment during their assemblies when everyone is in the room — all the students are in the assembly hall. And that the Junior ROTC programs do a presentation of colors, and they do other patriotic activities during that time. And it’s a much easier time at the high school level, because again like I said it’s when all the students are assembled in one place. We did clarify in the policy that we, that the Pledge Of Allegiance is performed each day at the middle school and at the elementary level.

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A bit later in the full video, school board member Doug Morrison explains that school administrators would be required to to ensure that patriotic displays would be part of each and every school assembly. Fox News managed to leave that quote out of their story as well.

So far this story sounds like business as usual at Fox News – whipping up their low-information viewers into a frenzy over an issue that is really not an issue. However, this one turned serious, as reported by Sioux Falls ABC-TV affiliate KSFY. School board member Kent Alberty told the station that board members had received hate mail and death threats, mostly from outside the area. Alberty says that one such threat called for all of the school board members to be lined up and shot.

Alberty says that the reporter who covered the story for the local station “…wasn’t at the School Board meeting, didn’t interview any members of the School Board, didn’t interview the person who spoke to the School Board…” ( http://www.ksfy.com/story/24028396/sc) Rather, the story was taken from a headline claiming that the board voted to drop the Pledge at the high school level. This was totally false. Fox News and Megyn Kelly picked up the story from there, and ran with it to a national audience.

It is well known that Fox News engages in sloppy reporting that can barely be called “journalism.” Sadly, what the honchos at Fox News ignore is that in far too many instances they are whipping up a frightened, largely uninformed audience that already believes that the country they grew up in is being changed for the worse. In this case, a portion of this audience has resorted to terrorist threats against five people who are doing one of the most important, yet largely thankless jobs in the country.

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